One decade for insightful brain: New advances on neural correlates of insight

Abstract

The first neuroimaging study measuring real-time brain activity during insight problem solving was conducted almost ten years ago. Subsequently, a large number of studies have used high-resolution event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the temporal dynamics and neural correlates of insight. Recent findings regarding the neural underpinnings of insight have led researchers to propose a neural framework referred to as the “insightful brain”. This putative framework represents the neural basis underlying the cognitive and affective processes involved in insight. The insightful brain is thought to involve many distributed brain regions, including the lateral prefrontal brain, cingulate cortex, hippocampus, superior temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, precuneus, cuneus, insula and cerebellum. Functional studies have reported that the lateral prefrontal cortex is responsible for mental set shifting and breaking in insight problem solving, the cingulate cortex is involved in cognitive conflict between new and old ideas as well as progress monitoring, and the hippocampus, superior temporal gyrus and fusiform gyrus form an integrated functional network specializing in the formation of novel and affective associations. In addition, affective transformation of problem representations has been found to depend on a non-verbal visual-spatial information-processing network comprised of the precuneus and cuneus. The insula has been found to reflect cognitive flexibility and emotional experience associated with insight, and the cortical control of finger movements was found to rely on the cerebellum.